Freedom House, democracy’s watchdog, monitors the state of
political freedom around the world. Its recent reportreveals “a growing disdain for democratic standards,” “a disturbing decline in
global freedom” and an ebbing of the global democratic tide that had been
surging from 1984 through 2004. Specifically, Freedom House reports “an overall
drop in freedom for the ninth consecutive year,” with 61 countries suffering
declines in freedom and only 33 registering gains. “Acceptance of democracy
as the world’s dominant form of government—and of an international
system built on democratic ideals—is under greater threat than at any
point in the last 25 years.”

This represents a challenge to the United States. After all, America laid the
groundwork for this international system, expanded it and has sustained it—and
America thrives in a world where free governments and free markets flourish.

With America promoting liberal political and economic
systems, as the Brookings Institution’s Robert Kagan observes, “The balance of
power in the world has favored democratic governments.” The alternative, Kagan
warns, is an international system where “great power autocracies” like China
and Russia undermine democratic norms, where there are “fewer democratic
transitions and more autocrats hanging on to power,” where democracy is on the
defensive.

That’s where we are today. But why is that?

It’s at least partly a function of the American public’s
world-weariness. Just 22 percentof Americans say the United States should “promote democracy and freedom in
other countries.” Yet as recently as 2005, 70 percent of Americans considered
building democracy in other counties an important foreign policy goal.

Reflecting the national mood, policymakers have phased out
democracy-building efforts; scaled backdemocracy-promotion initiatives;
mustered at best muted reactionswhen pro-democracy movements have come under assault; and shrunk the reach,
role and resources of democracy’s greatest defender: the U.S. military.

This shift away from democracy-promotion was predictable.
Like a pendulum, U.S. foreign policy swung back from the hyperactivity of the
immediate post-9/11 era. But there are tradeoffs and consequences to a foreign
policy that is less committed to promoting democracy and less interested in
buttressing an international system built on democratic ideals. It stands to
reason that when the world’s strongest exponent of democracy pulls back and
turns inward, the democratic tide will lose momentum.

The realists counter by arguing that the post-9/11 “freedom
agenda” pursued during the administration of President George W. Bush was an
aberration—and a costly one at that. They argue that just as America’s actions
cannot ensure democracy’s growth—they invariably point to Afghanistan and
Iraq—America’s inaction cannot be blamed for democracy’s retreat.

But the stubborn truth is that democracy-promotion has been a hallmark of U.S.
foreign policy since World War II. As President Franklin Roosevelt observed in
1942, “Freedom of person and security of property anywhere in the world depend
upon the security of the rights and obligations of liberty and justice
everywhere in the world.”

That explains why FDR envisioned “a
world founded upon four essential human freedoms: freedom of speech and
expression—everywhere in the world…freedom of every person to worship God in
his own way—everywhere in the world…freedom from want…freedom from fear.”

As world war gave way to Cold War, President Harry Truman
vowed “to help free peoples maintain their free institutions.”

Echoing FDR, President Dwight Eisenhower explained, “We
could be the wealthiest and the most mighty nation, and still lose the battle
of the world if we do not help our world neighbors protect their freedom and
advance their social and economic progress.”

President John Kennedy promised that America would “bear any
burden…in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

President Ronald Reaganbelieved that democracy “needs cultivating.” So he declared, “It is time that
we committed ourselves as a nation—in both the public and private sectors—to
assisting democratic development.” Toward that end, Reagan pledged “to foster the
infrastructure of democracy—the system of a free press, unions, political
parties, universities—which allows a people to choose their own way, to develop
their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.”

In that brief interregnum between the terrors of Stalinism
and jihadism, President Bill Clinton called for “engagement and enlargement” of
the democratic community. “Enhancing our security, bolstering our economic
prosperity and promoting democracy are mutually supportive,” he explained in a
strategy document. “Democratic
states are less likely to threaten our interests.”

In short, democracy-promotion was anything but a post-9/11
aberration.

However, the United States and its fellow democracies seem increasingly weighed
down and wearied by the realization that democracy isn’t inevitable, that a
liberal global order favoring free governments and free markets can’t be
preserved by speeches or treaties, that the Free World doesn’t run on autopilot
or grow by magic.

If we—the United States, the West, the world’s democracies—lack
the energy, the confidence, the will today to enlarge the Free World, as seems
to be the case, then we must at least protect and preserve the Free World by returning
to what FDR called “armed defense of democratic existence.”

First, we should maintain the military strength—and summon
the political will—to deter rising autocracies like China, revisionist governments
like Russia, revolutionary regimes like Iran and reactionary foes like North
Korea.

The United States cannot defend the Free World on the cheap.
In a time of war, the U.S. defense budget has fallen from 4.7 percent of GDP in
2009 to 3.1 percent today—headed for just 2.8 percent by 2018.

Nor can the United States defend the Free World alone.
Japan, Australia and India are rising to the occasion—and rising to the
challenge posed by China. Now it’s time for Europe to step up. NATO headquarters
has been begging members to invest 2 percent of GDP in defense for a decade.
Yet only four of NATO’s 28 members meet that standard, and virtually every
member is investing less in defense today than in 2001. In fact, the United
States now accounts for 75 percent of NATO’s defense spending, up from 50
percent during the Cold War.

Second, we should defend the democratic space. As FDR put
it, “Let us say to the democracies: ‘We Americans are vitally concerned in your
defense of freedom. We are putting forth our energies, our resources and our
organizing powers to give you the strength to regain and maintain a free
world.”

What’s that mean in 2015? For starters, it means arms for democratic Ukraine
rather than MREs and nonlethal aid. As Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko
says, “One cannot win the war with blankets.” Likewise, the Kurdish Regional
Government—a staunch ally and the closest thing to a cohesive, democratic
nation-state in Iraq—deserves direct military aid, rather than the trickle of
U.S. arms that pass through Baghdad. And as long as Taiwan remains committed to
a peaceful status quo with the Mainland, the island democracy deserves the
defensive weapons systems it has been promised. Under the Taiwan Relations Act,
the United States is obliged to “provide Taiwan with arms of a
defensive character,” yet Taiwan’s requests for submarines and F-16s have been languishingsince the Bush administration.

We need to remind the enemies of freedom—and perhaps
ourselves—that resisting aggression and deterring aggression do not constitute acts
of aggression. “Such aid is not an act of war,” FDR matter-of-factly noted, “even
if a dictator should unilaterally proclaim it so to be.”

Third, we should turn back those who violate the borderlands
of freedom. The Free World cannot allow autocracy or anarchy to roll back
democratic gains.

There can be no more Crimeas. Russia cannot repeat—or be
tempted to repeat—in the Baltics its salami-slice invasion of democratic
Ukraine or democratic Georgia. China cannot reincorporate Taiwan without the
consent of Taiwan. China’s “instant islands” must be delegitimized. And the
world’s bloodied band of democracies must defeat those who use our freedoms to
cloak their attacks against freedom. Put another way, ISIS and al Qaeda have to
be relentlessly targeted and utterly destroyed. Pin pricks and half-measures
won’t do.

Fourth, we must promote (and practice) economic freedom. If
Americans have learned anything from their well-intentioned efforts in the
unforgiving lands of Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s that democratic elections alone
don’t ensure freedom or promote stability.

“Democracy,” as Robert Kaplan observed in his book The
Coming Anarchy, “emerges only as a capstone to other social and economic
achievements.” These include a civil society that both protects minority rights
and respects majority rule, the rule of law, and economic freedom. The spread
of economic freedom creates incentivesfor cooperation within and between nation-states. And more economic freedom at homemeans a stronger economy, a growing GDP and the capacity to be “the great
arsenal of democracy” for a tiny fraction of that GDP.

Fifth, we should support political reformers and democratic
opposition movements.

Reagan once argued that “a little less détente…and more
encouragement to the dissenters might be worth a lot of armored divisions.” In
other words, it’s time, again, to employ rhetoric as a weapon. Reagan was
masterful at this—calling the USSR “an evil empire,” dismissing communism as “a
sad, bizarre chapter in human history” and explaining with impatient disdain,
“The West will not contain communism; it will transcend communism.”

Words like this have a power all their own—especially when
backed up, like Reagan’s, by action. Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, who
during the 1980s was confined to a tiny prison cell in Siberia, recalls reading
an issue of the communist party newspaper Pravda while in prison. Pravda quoted
Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech in an effort to discredit him and paint him as a
warmonger. But it had the opposite effect among the Soviet people. “We
dissidents were ecstatic,” Sharansky recalls. “Finally, the leader of the Free
World had spoken the truth—a truth that burned inside the heart of each and
every one of us.”

In the same way, Washington should offer a platform to the victims of Putinism—free-speech
activists and independent media, human rights activists and evangelical
Christians, political dissidents and those persecuted for their sexual
orientation. Washington should highlight Beijing’s contempt for human rights by
continually drawing attention to China’s laogai prisons,
underground churches, Tibetan independence advocates, Charter 08signatories and political dissidents. And Washington should challenge the legitimacy
of the North Korean and Iranian regimes by cataloguing their acts of terror in
high-profile settings—the president’s annual visit to the UN General Assembly,
State of the Union addresses, gatherings of APEC and the ASEAN Regional Forum.

Of course, we know that actions speak louder than words. “If the rest of this
century is to witness the gradual growth of freedom and democratic ideals,”
Reagan said in 1982, “we must take actions to assist the campaign for
democracy.”

America took those actions in the 20th century. It seems democracy
needs America just as much in the 21st century.

The Landing Zone is Dowd’s monthly column on national defense and international security featured on the American Legion's website.